Let
me offer a definition of racism: A racist is someone who considers
his racial identity more important than his identity as a member
of the human race. If a person belonging to one of the three principal
racial groups - whites (Europeans), blacks (Africans), or yellow-skinned
people (east Asians) - sees himself primarily as a member of that
group rather than as someone belonging to humanity, he is a racist.

I
would say that this concept also applies to ethnic groups. If, for
instance, an ethnic Jew, an Anglo-Saxon, a German, Pakistani,
Filipino, Chinese, Norwegian,
Iranian, Italian, Irish, Greek, or Arab identifies primarily with that
ethnicity, he is also a racist. “Race” has to do with
birth into a tribe, a collection of tribes, or a people, who came
from the same place. It is
a birth-determined characteristic.

Notice
that this definition has nothing to do with power or perceived power.
It has nothing to do with hatred
exhibited toward other groups. Racism
is simply a matter of identity. It is identification of oneself with
a narrower
segment of humanity rather than with humanity itself. Refusal to identify
with humanity may also, however, carry with it the notion of self-perceived
superiority to other groups. Why otherwise would one refuse to think
of oneself as mainly human? Is it because other people are considered
subhuman?
Does
your type of person have to be at the top?

There
are other kinds of chauvinism that have nothing to do with race.
For example, Marxist class consciousness
creates an identity among working
people
that pits them against people in the business class. We almost fought
a world war over that type of identity. Class struggle, whether initiated
by labor
unions or by Wall Street investors, divides people by occupational
group. It can also be destructive.

Another
type of chauvinism is religious. If one considers being a Christian,
a Muslim, a Buddhist, or member
of another religious group more important
than belonging to humanity, one exhibits another kind of narrow-mindedness.
In this case, it is chosen rather than acquired at birth. But that
does not make religious bigotry any less dangerous or intractable.
Some religions
aim at world domination and, in the process, cause great harm. The
Christians crusades to recapture Jerusalem were highly damaging as
are the current
Muslim
jihadist campaigns. Both involved or involve hatred directed against
other people and disregard of our common humanity.

The
state religion of patriotism is another way to divide people. If
I am proud to be
an American but not proud to be a citizen of
the world,
I then
put my nation above humanity. America may be multiracial, but it
is not immune from exhibiting disparaging opinions of other people.
Do
we want
to be thrown
into the same pot with those billions of Chinese, Indians, Africans,
or
Latin Americans? Aren’t we more “special” than
that? Yes, we have had a run of good fortune, but our own fate
as Americans (citizens of
the United States) is ultimately bound to the fate of humanity.

Let’s
widen our sense of identity also to our fellow creatures on earth
and to the earth itself. Rejecting dualistic or sectarian consciousness,
let’s embrace the Hindu principle that the universe is one.
Why not be kind to animals and let plant life flourish? Why not
feel a kinship with
all sentient beings? Now is the time when, for our own sake as
well as that of others in this world, we must restrain our selfish
use of natural resources
and bring the earth’s living ecology back into balance.

some
identifying categories

Enough
said of racism. Our primary identity is membership in the human race.
There are, however, other lesser identities. We each belong to particular
groups that define us in contrast with other people. There is nothing
wrong with pursuing those separate identities so long as we respect
the right of others to do the same.

How
do I identify myself? I have, first, a name. This does not denote
membership in a group. A name
is an individual identifier. It is a key to which other
information may be added in a personal record. In my case, I am William
(“Bill”)
McGaughey. My full name is William Howard Taft McGaughey, Jr. I was named
after my father who, in turn, was named after the 27th President of the
United States, William Howard Taft. My name therefore says less about
me than it
does about decisions made by my father and mother and by my paternal grandparents
when in 1912 they named their new-born child. One of the decision makers,
one would guess, might have been a Republican.

Other
identifying features would include the kinds of information that
one might put on an employment
form. Let me propose a generic scheme of
identity.
In the first section, I’ll include some personal information that
everyone would know about himself immediately. The second section would
include identifying
information that may be subject to personal interpretation, gradation,
or change.

These
categories are arranged roughly in descending order of importance.
For a person at either extremity of life - very young
or very old
- age would be the critical element in identity; this would matter
less in
the middle
years. Gender is important in certain roles. Whether one is male
or female determines child-bearing capacity and therefore implies
a certain relationship
to others within a family. It determines which rest room to use
in a public place. Race and ethnicity have identified certain neighborhoods
in big
cities and political voting blocs. The language that one speaks
characterizes
the
group of people with whom one regularly communicates and therefore
builds
communities. And so it would go down the line.

This
is the type of information that can easily be assembled in computer
records.
If others gave similar information, the computer
could quickly
compile the names of people in a category and create instant
lists of “communities”.
Truthfully, however, this is not how I think of myself. I am not
so interested in group identities based on age, gender, and the
other
categories. Even
if that is what I am, I approach the question of identity in another
way.

our
place in a story

We
are, instead, what we do. Our identities are determined by our place
in a story. We are characters in our own life story. That is who
we are primarily. But what stories are we talking about?

The
German poet and philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, once said: "All
of us seek answers to three big questions in life: What is the story of
all mankind? What is the story of my time? And what story is mine
alone?" The
key to personal identity is found in answering those three questions.

In
truth, our identities are found on several different levels within
humanity. We are, first, part of a world community of human beings.
We share in humanity’s
common experience. Second, we belong to smaller communities in our own
place and time. We have an active relationship to what is going
on around us now.
Third, we are individuals with our own life stories. We find our own
meanings in life and try to interpret and fulfill life’s
purpose in those terms.

History
is a discipline of story telling. World history would be the
story of mankind. (There is also a type of history called “big
history” that
tells the story of the universe.) In regard to the second type of history,
there are unfolding events involving particular communities, organizations,
personalities, and so forth that have taken place during our life time
or within recent memory. Their stories have a place in world history
and can
be interpreted in the light of larger trends. Finally, there is a person’s
own story narrating significant events that happened in his life. History
at the personal level might be an autobiography or a collection of
written materials concerning oneself, together with a written or unwritten
understanding
of how one’s life has developed.

If
history is a set of stories, stories are a telling of events, often
in chronological sequence, that
unfold in a stream of consciousness
associated with the narrator. Stories bring a conscious continuity
to those events.
They also help to explain how a certain situation came to be. There
is a
threads of events connecting the situation at the beginning of the
story with the situation at the end. At the level of world history,
the story
may explain how we arrived at the present state of society from a
world much
different in the past. Which events helped to shape our present world?
In an autobiography, we might want to tell some of the more interesting
events
that happened in our lives or, more ambitiously, find a pattern of
experience to show how we changed.

history
as a creation story

Creation
stories usually explain how the world began. However, the world is
continually being created anew as time continues. Human situations
change. The focus of history is properly upon the state of society.
Residents of present-day Manhattan live in a world quite different
from a primitive tribe of people living in the Amazon jungle. Yet,
those Manhattan residents are part of a society that once looked
more like what the Brazilian tribesmen now experience. There is a
story - world history - that describes how humanity got from one
situation to the other. There are events that specifically explain
the origin of certain practices.

Historians
approach this subject in various ways. I have my own scheme of world
history that breaks
the unfolding story of humanity into “chapters”,
or coherent sets of stories, that show progression from one state to another.
In “big history”, it is likewise possible to narrate the history
of the universe, beginning with the “big bang” and carrying forth
into the present and future. Stories are necessarily told from the storyteller’s
egocentric point of view. In big history, for instance, we neglect events
happening in billions of stars and planets to focus on our own solar system.
But the discipline of a universal history requires an attempt to cover everything
adequately.

"big
history"

Let’s
start with Big History. Here is how I would organize the chapters
of this story:

Chapter
1 - Origin of the cosmos, the emergence of stars and gallaxies from
the cosmic dust, creation of the heavier
elements in stars

Chapter
2 - Formation of the sun and solar system, planets and the earth,
the earth’s moon, earth’s atmosphere
and crust, shifting tectonic plates, formation of mountains, glacial
erosion, a system of rivers and seas

Chapter
3 - Life on earth, creation of organic molecules and DNA, multi-celled
organisms, plant
life and an oxygenated atmosphere,
emergence of animals,
hierarchies of species and the food chain

Chapter
4 - Appearance of the human species, mammals and apes, split from
the ape family, bipedal
transportation, the early hominoids, Australopithecus
man, homo habilis, homo erectus, expanding brain size, Neanderthal
man, homo sapien’s origin in and exodus from Africa, dispersal
of the human species throughout the earth

Chapter
6 - The culture of written language, a way to make thought endure,
how writing began in Mesopotamia and Egypt, ideographic
symbols, governments
and the formation of political empires, social hierarchies,
alphabetic writing, the philosophical revolution of the 6th and
5th centuries
B.C., Socrates
and Confucius, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, spiritual empires,
religious manuscripts, monastic life

Big
history looks at the physical universe and man’s part in it in
a narrowing scope of attention. From the vast regions
of space we focus on the solar system and the earth.
Then life appears including human life. From
human life comes speech and thought. Expressions of
thought appear in written words, able to outlive their
creator. Then we have the mass production of
words through printing and the mass production of visual
and auditory images by various electronic recording
devices. The computer, while electronic,
is a different kind of device because it permits two-way
communication and processes information. In some ways,
it is a more efficient machine for thinking
than the human brain. Such technology accesses the
complex structures of DNA allowing man to remake his
physical nature.

five
epochs of civilization

This
is history at its most extensive. Somewhat narrower is the history
of civilization. Here we are looking at the segment of history appearing
in chapters 6 and 7 of big history, and to some extent in chapter
8. Civilized societies are to be distinguished from life in tribal
communities before people lived in cities and writing was invented.
History proceeded from written records. We take its story from the
earliest city-states in Mesopotamia (Iraq), Egypt, Turkey, India,
and China to the complex society of urban communities in the 21st
century. I believe that this story can be coherently told by a scheme
called “five epochs of civilization”.

First
we have an introduction to that story in the situation of prehistoric
man. This
was before urban communities were developed. It was before writing
had been invented. Civilized societies have two aspects according to this
scheme: a dominant cultural technology and a dominant institution of power.

Chapter
1 - The first type of civilization was the kind that arose
in Egypt and Mesopotamia five to six thousand years ago. Ideographic
writing (in
which visual symbols stood for words) was the communication technology
that launched
this historical epoch. Its society was dominated by the institution
of government. And so world history in its first three thousand
years was
the story of kingdoms,
wars, and the formation of political empires in various parts of
the world. In the west, its culmination was the Roman empire.

Chapter
2 - The second type of civilization arose after alphabetic writing
had spread widely in the middle east, south Asia, and the Mediterranean
region. it began with the appearance of a remarkable group of philosophers
and prophets
in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C. These great thinkers presented
a moral
critique of society. Eventually this stream of thought merged with
earlier religious traditions to form world religions - principally,
Buddhism,
Hinduism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam. The religions
developed a power-sharing
arrangement with government.

Chapter
3 - In the third civilization, focused upon western Europe, there
was a cultural movement away
from Christianity during the
Renaissance.
Gutenberg’s
invention of the printing press in the 15th Century brought a
flood of printed literature which spread knowledge to the masses.
Europeans
explored and colonized
other parts of the world. the society became dominated by commerce
and by secular education which stressed works of literature and
history. Epitomized
by Victorian England, this literate and prosperous society self-destructed
in World War I.

Chapter
4 - The fourth type of civilization arose in the early part of
the 20th Century as sports and other kinds
of popular
entertainment came
to dominate
the culture of industrialized societies. The technologies of
phonograph recordings, motion pictures, radio, and television
distributed
its images widely. The
media of news and entertainment became power centers in society.
We were moving here away from literacy. Young people were obsessed
with rock
stars, sports heroes, and film personalities.

Chapter
5 - We are still writing this chapter of history. The personal
computer
is bringing society to a new type of culture.
The Internet
allows a more
interactive type of communication between the providers and
consumers of knowledge. Its culture spans the world. No doubt
many other
novel experiences
will flow from this technology but I cannot say what they are.

Other
types of history

These,
then, are two ways to organize the larger set of experiences. Both
types of history are creation stories encompassing all peoples and
cultures. The standard histories tend to be smaller in focus. Instead
of world history, we are often exposed to the history of western
society. We also have national histories focused on the experience
of the American people. Those have traditionally been chronologies
of political rulers or administrations with a few wars thrown in.
They may be written to glorify the people whose exploits are described
in the histories.

The
history of western peoples usually has a three-part structure: ancient,
medieval, modern.

Ancient
history consists of the history of the Greeks and Romans supplemented
by accounts of the Jewish people found
in the Bible.
Peoples such as the
Egyptians, Babylonians, and Persians may be peripherally involved. China,
India, equatorial Africa, and, of course, the Americas are largely ignored.
This period of history is often thought to have ended in 475 A.D. when
the last emperor of the western Roman empire was deposed.

Medieval
history begins with the ascendancy of the Christian church after
Rome fell. The Pope, bishop of Rome, presided over
a spiritual empire that
commanded the allegiance of barbarian kings. Church and state jointly
ruled western society, with the church being the senior partner.
Its great enterprise
was the series of crusades launched by Pope Urban II in 1095 A.D. to
recapture the Holy Land from Muslim rulers. The cathedrals
of Europe are enduring
monuments to the church’s great influence. The Papacy gradually
became weakened and discredited, especially after the Protestant Reformation
split Christendom.

Modern
history begins with the Italian Renaissance. Western peoples now
turned away from religion as a new worldly spirit
entered the culture.
The several
European nations fought to establish colonies and gain trade advantages.
Products were traded between Europe, east Asia, America, and Africa.
Wars were fought in Europe by nations seeking unsuccessfully to recreate
the
unity of the Roman empire. With the industrial revolution, new industries
emerged
based on new scientific inventions. Popular education exposed the
masses to great literature. Great dramatists, poets, novelists, and
composers
of symphonies became proud exemplars of national cultures.

The
term, “modern”,
now seems inadequate as this type of culture is fast disappearing.
What should one call the present era? “Post-modern”,
perhaps? In fact, the culture has changed so much that historical
traditions are hard to identify. With today’s young people
interested in cable television, downloaded music, and video games
rather than written works,
it would seem that “history” itself has come to an end.

history
written to glorify particular people

Whatever
is left of written history seems to be for the purpose of glorifying
particular peoples while disparaging others. Traditionally, history
has been a chronicle of governments describing a succession of rulers,
laws, wars, treaties, and other high-level events in a nation or
imperial dynasty. Government leaders want history to present themselves
in a good light. The story of progress is therefore written in terms
of working from an inglorious beginning toward the present. “We” are
the culmination of history. A 19th century textbook of American history
narrates, besides the succession of presidential administrations,
the wars and treaties that added territory to the United States until
it stretched from sea to sea. In this grand march to fulfill our
historical destiny, Indians were destined to bite the dust.

Now,
of course, American history is written differently. Even so, politically
powerful persons continue to write the history or, at least, arrange for
certain kinds of history to be taught in the schools. I asked a high-school
student of my acquaintance what she studied in her American-history course. “Slavery
and discrimination” was the answer. I asked her what she studied
in her course on world history. She said she studied “Nazis”.
I assume that this meant studying the Holocaust.

Even
if circumstances have changed, the current version of American history
is likewise written from a political standpoint. Against white resistance,
African Americans overcame slavery and discrimination in a proud march
toward what they are today. World history is written from the standpoint
of Jews
dying in Nazi concentration camps. I suspect that blacks and Jews, or
their
respective supporters, had a hand in the political decisions that led
to adoption of those textbooks which the high schools use.

So,
in today’s American history, we have stories in which white
people rather than Indians “bite the dust”. American
history becomes a narrative of their decline. Expressing our national
aspiration, Civil
Rights leader Joseph Lowrey said this prayer at President Obama’s
inauguration: “Lord,
in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in
the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day
when
black will
not be asked to get [in] back, when brown can stick around, when yellow
will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white
will embrace
what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen!” In
other words, the black, yellow, and red men can expect to advance socially
while whites should do “what is right”. What is that? It
is right, presumably, for the white race to step aside now so that
others can take
their place in society.

How
do white children feel about that? I imagine they feel the same as
how Indian school children might once have felt
when they were taught
that their
culture was no good and the white man’s ways had to be adopted.
A new group holding the reigns of power wants to control the narrative.

stories
to make school children proud

When
history characterizes particular groups of people as heroes or villains,
it offends the identity of persons belonging to the groups that are
negatively portrayed. The public schools require attendance. Students
are not allowed to skip classes that might offend their dignity.
I believe that requiring them to attend demographically contentious
history classes is akin to the schools teaching doctrines of a particular
religion. Those classes may be attended by persons of another faith.
Students should not have to be exposed to hostile messages about
their group and be asked to give “right” or “wrong” answers
to tests reflecting the course values.

Identity
is sacrosanct. Grade-school courses ought not intrude upon its space.
This has nothing to do
with falsifying history. Even if the offensive history
is true, that does not mean that young people should be forced to listen
to it or take tests based upon its point of view. Sensitivity should be
shown to the audience, especially when children are involved. The
general history
should therefore be written from a standpoint that is morally neutral toward
the various groups in society, or at least balanced, while audiences comprising
these groups might, if they wish, study histories that make themselves
look good.

For
world history, I propose that the story be about the changing structure
of society rather than the destiny of particular
peoples. As personal identity
exists at several levels, so history exists at those levels. There is
a structure, like that of of government in which a citizen simultaneously
belongs to national,
state, and local communities. He or she feels no contradiction between
those different civic identities. So we can have histories as broad or
narrow as
we wish. Each person can decide where and how to affiliate.

I
would propose these principles for the writing of history. First,
history should
be approached as a science rather than as a religion. If it is
a science, the historian will not feel compelled to make facts fit
a particular
belief.
Instead, theories and beliefs will be changed in accordance with fact.
A second and related principle is to resist the temptation to tell
stories that make some people look good at the expense of others.
Instead, tell
a
story the way it happened. Avoid moralizing about the characters.

It
is sometimes argued that the standard American history textbook
is, in effect, a “white people’s” history or a “male-dominated
history” because the prominent persons in this history were mostly
white males. Yet, even if Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and such persons
were white males, the history was not written in that spirit. They
were mentioned in history because of their roles in building the American
nation. If the
focus is on the nation-building process or the creation of a particular
type of society, the story can be told without offending people.
Today, on the other hand, history textbooks are written in the spirit
of including blacks because they are black and women because they
are women.
The name of the game is to see how much space in the general book
of history will be given to my kind of person.

We
need to begin thinking about history as a vehicle for promoting everyone’s
dignity. In a globalized society, that is the path to world peace.
Life, of course, brings forth situations where some people behave badly or
well.
History must be open to all types of experiences. However, it is
the political use of history that concerns me. Repetitious history to make
certain people
feel guilty is a hostile act and the victim of that act has a right
to complain.

ditch
Moses and Pharaoh

There
is an image in history that has caused much harm. It is the story
of Moses who, with God’s help, defeated the Egyptian Pharaoh.
Another such story is David slaying Goliath. When you pitch your
story that way, you are making someone else lose so you can be the
winner. Your positive identity depends on someone else’s loss.
This kind of identity cannot be sustained in a community comprised
of many groups. If everyone is posing as Moses, who will play Pharaoh’s
part? It becomes impossible to “do unto others as you would
have others do unto you.”

In
American politics, the majority white population has been cast in
Pharaoh’s
role while blacks and other minorities play Moses. We whites have become
this huge group of losers being inflicted with various plagues. From an Egyptian
standpoint, Moses was an ungrateful murderer brought up in Pharaoh’s
household. White Americans must likewise suffer rancorous complaints in our
political home. We need a story where the different types of people are not
scheming to put each other at a moral disadvantage but instead deal with
others in good faith.

toward
a positive self-image

I
as a white man, an American, or whatever my identity is now, want
to
see myself as being good. The black man, I’m sure, has similar
aspirations; they are equally legitimate. And, let’s not forget
the women, members of other races, or whoever else lives on this
planet: Each of us has an identity which ought to be positive. If
we do things of which we are proud, we help ourselves reach that
end. We create a positive identity for ourselves.

However,
the public perception or the telling of a story creates a tangible
environment
for projecting our positive self-image. It’s unhealthy
when groups of people are persuaded to think of themselves as bad people
or descendants of persons who committed crimes. History should be written
to affirm the dignity of peoples, not tear it down.

Again,
I am not advocating that negative events be whitewashed from history.
All true facts
should be accepted in this body of knowledge. And yet, there
is a difference between history as knowledge and history as transmission
of a people’s proud culture. Reconciling the two involves a balancing
act.

For
example, Japanese soldiers committed numerous brutal acts in China,
Korea, and southeast Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. There is a controversy
about how
this history should be taught in Japanese schools. Complete omission
would amount to falsifying history but smearing school children’s
faces in the misdeeds of their forbearers would be unhelpful and cruel.

We
want, instead, a sounding board for our own potential. Remember the
custom of the Dagara tribe of west Africa in which a group of adults
echoed the
cries of a new-born baby, telling the baby he was recognized and
welcomed
into this world. That baby found a bond of identity. And so, each
of us, even as adults, need our identities echoed in the community.
We
need
to
be publicly recognized for who we are. History offers a framework
in which that
can be accomplished.

some
rules for identity

We
need some rules for this type of identity to make sure that everyone
is recognized and respected. Some of these rules may be briefly stated:

1. Be true to yourself. Your authentic identity is what you yourself
think
or do. If you have a thought, you at least think it is true.
If you do something,
that experience becomes a part of yourself. Build on such situations to
a positive end.

2. Do not make your own positive identity dependent upon the negative
identity
of someone else. Let your identity stand on
its own feet. Be yourself.
Play your own game. Leave other people’s identities alone.

3. As a member of a group, limit yourself to determining the identity
of
your
own group. Don’t tell members of other groups who they are or
ought to be. That is their business, not yours. You are responsible
for being
yourself.

4. Beware of letting the government tell you who you are. You, the citizen,
are master of the government; it is not your master. The
government
will invent many projects to decide how you spend your life. It will
tell
you that you owe so many years of public service, perhaps in the
military. High-sounding politicians will appeal for self-sacrifice
from you.
No, you need to beat
back those requests like a lion tamer keeping a monster at bay. Your
life
is yours, not the government’s.

Why
be true to yourself? The desire is “self-evident”. You
know in your heart what you want or what you believe. When someone
else
uses pressure tactics to overcome your true desire, it sets up
an inner conflict that will
not go away. You become strong by standing up for yourself. You
become miserable by letting someone else control you. So many people
today
are wanting to
do that. Their own identity may not satisfy them.

A
person who has a creative vision and carries it to a successful conclusion
is, for
me, a model of positive identity. He finds satisfaction
in
his own work. An unhealthy identity exists where a person’s
self-image depends on someone else. It is where a person becomes
emotionally attached to another,
either positively or negatively. The worst kind is attachment
through hate. If someone hates another person, his mind is not
free. A
hate-based identity
brings a negative dependence on someone else. A love-based identity
is better, of course, but one should be careful not to go overboard.
Our own identities
should be strong enough to stand alone.

This
book is written from a white man’s perspective. I can say what
I think white people should be because I am part of that group.
It would serve little purpose for me to try to prescribe black
people’s identity.
That is their business, not mine. I would not presume to intrude
upon that domain unless invited to give an opinion. When we talk
about humanity, of
course, then we can all say what we think it should be since
we all belong to that group. We should also want members of groups
other than our own to
do well since we are all in this world together.

identity
on several levels

My
own identity is therefore mutli-faceted. I am a physical creature,
a human being, a member of civilized society, a 21st century American,
a resident of Minneapolis, and so on. I am also white, male, and
in my late 60s. The reason for presenting several versions of history
is that each has a story pertaining to myself at some level. Even
if a supernova explosion seems remote from myself, it is part of
the physical universe in which I live. The story of civilization
helps to define my own culture. My identity is related to my location
in those larger stories. They help make sense of how my world evolved
and where it is going.

Additionally,
each person understands himself or is remembered for certain things.
There is a story behind those
memorable events. The story may span
many years or it may describe events happening in a relatively short time.
The person whose identity is shaped by the story would stand in the midst
of it. The story would have a beginning and an end. It would include an
exchange between conscious motivation and activities in the world.
We have a natural
sense of how stories should be told.

The
problem is to make sure that it is our own stories that are being
told. So many powerful groups want
to control the narrative. We need to recognize
the threat and develop adequate defenses. Another challenge is to recognize
which of life’s experiences are personally significant and deserve
to be remembered. Each person has many different experiences at many
levels of involvement with the world. It may not be a single story but
a collection
of them that defines the whole person.

To
put our own identities on a sound footing, it would help to reflect
upon our lives, write down significant
experiences, and look for comparable
experiences
in other people. The persons whom we would pick as personal heroes
tell us much about ourselves. We would do well to discuss such things
with
other people so we are forced to articulate our personal thoughts and
are put
in
a position of receiving feedback. Knowledge increases in the process.

white
identity

Let
me return to the idea that, as an American, I have effectively been
defined as a white man. Others see me that way even if I would choose
another identity. I and other whites are under so much pressure to
denounce our race. I choose not to do so. With opposition to the
white race centered in academia, journalism, and other organs of
the cultural elite, white identity has acquired an anti-intellectual
tone. The pockets of “white culture” are concentrated
among lower-middle-class Americans.

Beneath
the radar of educational and media elites, NASCAR races, appealing
primarily to whites, have
become the nation’s fastest growing spectator
sport. While rock ‘n roll occupies the cultural mainstream, Country
music with its adult themes has a large and predominantly white audience.
Sarah Palin became an overnight sensation when McCain picked her as his
running mate because she tapped into those cultural roots. A large group
of previously
underrepresented people - white people - felt that their presence was at
last being recognized in mainstream politics.

By
and large, the “white” culture
flourishes with little help from the government, the media, foundations,
or arts organizations. There
is little intellectual support for such culture but instead a steady
core of supporters. Alienated from the cultural elite, these supporters
see
themselves as the backbone of the “real America.” They have
come to see an identity of their own arising spontaneously from events
in their lives.

Yes,
there is white racial hate, and that is unfortunate. So is racial,
ethnic, or religious hate of any sort. But let me as a
white man address
white racism
specifically. Whites are increasingly threatened by hostile or unflattering
images in the media, by their legitimate grievances being characterized
as racist hate, and by their general powerlessness in this society.
They are put
in a box that is nailed shut. It seems that no political movement will
correct the situation. Whites as whites are being silenced.*

Some
responding to this situation respond through violence which they
see as a strong and potentially effective response. But all it
does is intensify
the stereotype of white racism and prolong the loss. The media will
not give our point of view a fair shake. Unpromising it may seem,
however, the best
way back to dignity and strength is through public opinion.

Violence
and unbridled expressions of hate are preferred by simpleminded
persons who want quick solutions. The solution will not be quick.
We therefore need patience. We need to persuade our fellow citizens
that
our cause is
just. We need to exhibit true good will towards men and be friends
with whoever will accept us as friends.

We
also need to oppose entrenched groups in the media, education, and
religion, who would do us harm - hostile
journalists in a “fourth branch of government” that
cannot be removed from office, hateful and dogmatic educators with
tenure, religious professionals who use God’s name to promote their
own political views. These ideological enemies can be beaten not by direct
appeals but
by bypassing them and appealing to a broader audience.

Ultimately,
the game will be won in the arena of reasoned argument. It will be won
by setting a more decent example. The missing ingredient
thus far
has been the courage to admit what we know and feel to be right.
We whites
need the courage to compete openly in the realm of ideas. With
a persistent push, we can win.

The
message about white people in the media focuses on the “bigot”,
the “hater”, the “loser” who lashes
back pathetically. No platform is given those who express themselves
in reasoned, self-confident
ways. And so the media sees what it wants to see. It reports
what conforms to its own stereotypes. It’s up to us,
however, to decide whether to accept this dishonest culture
or place ourselves
in opposition.

Our
dignity as white people will not endlessly be denied. By an unseen
dialectic, the judgment of history
is swinging to
an opposite
position.
If you can believe
it, our time will come soon.

* As I write these words (February 20, 2010), I was supposed
to be attending a conference near Washington, D.C., featuring
a speech by Nick Griffin of the British National Party,
a newly elected member of the European Parliament, and sponsored by a pro-white
publication called “American Renaissance.” It would have been
my first acquaintance with this group. On the day before I was to have
flown to Dulles airport, I learned that the conference had been cancelled
because of pressures put on hotels where the conference would have taken
place by “anti-racist” protestors, including a former official
of the FBI and of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The conference
organizers had commitments from four different hotels to hold the conference,
but,
one after
another, they all changed their mind after receiving threats from the protestors.
No news organization covered the cancellations.